President’s Corner – July 2025

Members and Friends

Bike Riding and Wine Tasting (District Wine Village in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada)

Rallying with our Canadian Members

LaVerne and I just returned from a great rally in southern British Columbia, Canada jointly hosted by the British Columbia Airstream Club and the Washington Airstream Club.  Great finally spending some time with our Canadian friends and members in the gorgeous Okanagan Valley wine region.

Crossing the border was a breeze – just needed to review the Canadian list of restricted items (only a few) and continued our journey after a nice conversation with a friendly Canadian customs agent.  Returning to the States was a bit more challenging, but what a great visit.  We’ll be back.

Thanks again to the joint rally co-hosts:

• Barbara & Trenor Tilley (BRN #2007), BC Airstream Club
• Mona & J Kinder, (BRN #9998), WA Airstream Club
• Lori & Bryan Grassi, (BRN #716), WA Airstream Club

Want to Automate your Club (or Region) Mailing list?

Let’s talk about how to keep our club members engaged and informed. Email outreach is a crucial part of this, and it’s a key way to retain members.Our Club continues to grow, with roughly 200 new members joining per month.  Keeping up to date with new member contact information can be challenging for Local Clubs and Regions.  Thanks to our Information Technology Committee (ITC) we’re glad to announce that our automated solution for synchronizing MailChimp is now being used by roughly 10 of our pioneering Local Club for their newsletters and other Club communications.

From: Marc Nijdam (BRN #7569) Chair, Information Technology Committee):

Now, I know what you might be thinking: “Just sending out an email and copying and pasting the member list from the website sounds easy enough.” But here’s the thing: this method might work for small clubs, but it’s not sustainable in the long run.

Here’s why:

• Email providers see long CC or BCC lists as spam and may block your account.
• They check received emails for the same pattern and often mark them as spam, which means your email gets missed.
• Email providers have limits on the number of recipients in an email, so your email might not even be sent.
• Formatting email to look good on mobile and desktop devices takes a lot of work and testing.
• Users can’t unsubscribe from future emails all at once or by category.
• Senders can’t track how well your emails are being read.
• Managing the email membership list is a manual process that can lead to errors.

But here’s the good news: there’s a solution! Email platforms like Mailchimp, Mailgun, and Braze can help you manage your email outreach effectively. They work with email providers’ spam filtering engines, manage user email preferences, and track how well your emails are being read.

Now, let’s talk about how to use these platforms to manage your email list. When you use a service like Mailchimp, you’ll create an “audience” of email subscribers, which in our case, are your member email addresses. To send an email to your list, you can select a subset of the audience based on certain attributes, create a customizable email template, and schedule the email for delivery.

And guess what? We’ve made it even easier for clubs and regions to synchronize the audience of email recipients with the ACI membership database automatically. Setting this up is super simple, so let’s get started!

To set up your Mailchimp membership synchronization, you’ll need to create or use an existing Mailchimp account. Next, you’ll need to create an audience to hold your membership list. Just a heads up, Mailchimp charges for audience sizes over 500. Once you’ve got that sorted, you can contact the ITC via email or Slack with the audience ID and Mailchimp API key.

Once everything’s set up, the audience will sync your membership database with the audience every night while still respecting your member subscription preferences. The synchronized membership list will include all the important details like your birthday, membership expiration date, and whether you’re lapsed.

If you have any questions or need help getting set up, don’t hesitate to reach out to the ITC at itc@airstreamclub.org. They’ll be happy to assist you.

Marc Nijdam (BRN #7569 Chair, Information Technology Committee)

Club 70^th Year Anniversary

To celebrate our Club’s 70th Anniversary, we have a year-long schedule of activities and educational opportunities. Do you have a long family history with the Club? Or a unique perspective on what it means to be an ACI member? We want to hear from you! Share your story for a chance to be featured in this special issue. Submit your story here.

We’re also showcasing the stunning photos you’ve been posting on the 70th Anniversary Kululu Board. Keep sharing—your picture just might appear in the magazine! Submit your photos today!

Looking forward to seeing you all down the road!

Eric McHenry

International President / BRN 153 // Amateur Radio callsign AA6EM

emchenry@airstreamclub.org